The Factory. Hiroko Oyamada. Translated by David Boyd. New Directions, 2019. 128 pp. $13.95 (paper). What is factory work? Is it solely labor that takes place within what is traditionally understood to be a factory? That is to say: manufacturing or machine work? Is this understanding too narrow? Is this understanding classist, defensive, an illusion? …
Every six minutes another word is dropped from the lexicon. Who says there’s no use anymore for woolfell, the skin of a sheep still attached to the fleece?And when did we stop calling tomatoes love apples? I need somewhere in the world for there still to bea fishwife who understands the economy of flesh grown …
I think about the word: TENDER And its meaningsHe told me I was so tender. Tender meaning easily to bruise? Meaning soft to the touch?Meaning perfection to taste? Meaning juicy,Or close to bloody. Tender . . .Did he mean tinder?Like when I saw him on TinderLike when I saw someone who might’ve been posing as …
and maybe they’ve had enough; and maybe the ship will finally sinkand maybe the controversy will be settled and maybe the rendering will be palpable and maybe the reckoning will be gloriousand maybe the divide will be bridged with glory and maybe the flashes will be fragmentsand maybe the center will not holdand maybe the …
(Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967-1970 with a line adapted from Kristin Chang a) pogroms1b) a police action2c) incursion3d) starvation4 1. my country/grows into the slaughter/it was born for/i storyboard origin:/where a group of foxes is a troop/& sometimes a skulk/where a group of men is a military/ & also/a rape/because i’m Nyamiri/i disaster/a mixed race of bloodthirsty …
Closest I ever was to her, sheer proximity. Applied glue to her fake eyelashesone Halloween. Down on one knee, held my fingers to her eyelidsfor whole minutes, for good measure. Don’t open them, not yet. The surprise comes never. Nothing mysterious about the way I wantedto do her dishes, dance in her kitchen.Made a home …
Our solution had class.Our solution had so much class its jumbotron said CLASSYin neon green, twenty-five feet high. Our solution had a quesadilla press. Our solution had a V8 Hemi.Because our solution had a hammer, everything looked like the problem.People blindfolded and spun dizzy by our solution pinnedthe problem on our predecessors. We regretted to …
Split and hulled—I’ve eaten the small brainhalf by half, prizing it loosefrom the brittle inner architecture.First, an oily sweetness on the tongue, and thenthe tannic dryness, its bitter signaturethat lingers like the taste of losing what you fooledyourself to thinking you possessed.Beside the housewhere you will never goagain, no doubt the treestill grows and each …
What is this stretch of wildernessI see inside my screen? Alpine lake and talus slope— inside? No, it comes to me like heat from a bedof campfire coals—light in this dark roomthat turns me shades of blue, green, gray, awash in nature’sstandard hues. But what is it? Not the scenebut that which holds or shows …
The smallest species of sheep had evolved in the tropical ecosystem of the Dominican Republic.Like most quadrupeds of the time, they had one set of teeth to last a lifetime,holes in the lining of their eardrums, eyes that burned some afternoons, and seemed to have a bird’s crucial feather floating around in their brains.A herd …